Unless otherwise indicated herein, the description provided in this section is not itself prior art to the claims and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
A typical cellular network includes one or more serving systems that provide cellular service to user equipment devices (UEs), such as cell phones, tablet computers, tracking devices, embedded wireless modules, and other wirelessly equipped communication devices. At some point in time, a UE may request access to a serving system. For instance, the UE may seek to register with the serving system. The serving system may then communicate with the UE and a network authentication system in an attempt to authenticate the UE.
The authentication process may involve the serving system providing to the UE a random number that is known by the network authentication system and the UE using the random number and a security key that is stored in the UE to compute an authentication result. The UE may then transmit the computed authentication result to the serving system, which in turn may provide the authentication result to the network authentication system. Further, simultaneously or sequentially, the network authentication system may carry out the same computations as the UE using the same random number as the UE but using a security key that is stored in a network profile record for the UE.
The network authentication system may then compare its computed authentication result with the authentication result computed by the UE. At this point, assuming all other data used in the computations was correct, the authentication process should succeed if the network authentication system and UE both used the same security key in their respective computations. In particular, if they both used the same security key, then the results of their computations should match, which the network authentication system would deem to represent successful authentication. Whereas, if they did not use the same security key, then the results of their computations would not match, which the network authentication system would deem to represent failed authentication. In the event authentication is successful, the serving system may then perform normal system access processing and thereby provide the UE access to the cellular network.